After 50 minutes add the remaining malt extract and the second hop packet

After 60 minutes remove from the boil and add to a sink of cold water

When the liquid has cooled add to the carboy

Make sure the temperature is below 25 degrees

Add yeast to carboy

Cover the bung and gently invert a few times

Add sanitising solution to the airlock and put in the bung

The colour came out looking a little bit brown and not exactly appetising but I’m hoping that this improves after bottling

It certainly didn’t start to look any better once fermentation started

Bottling 29-02-2016

Siphoned out of the fermenter using just a hose into 12 330ml bottles. Added a measure of castor sugar to each bottle. At 1.020 the final gravity seemed way too high but it had been fermenting for 2 weeks so there wasn’t much else to do. If bottles start exploding I’ll simply have to uncap and recap them.

The beer tasted a little bit sour and lacking much malt or hop flavour. I’m thinking #1 could be a failure and may end up way too fizzy. Will have to wait 2 weeks to find out

Tasting 4 /10

Opened my first bottle on 07-03-2016 and it wasn’t as bad as I thought. It smells better than when bottled but still has a slight sour/cider smell. Luckily this doesn’t affect the taste much. The malt flavour is a bit strong for my liking and there’s very little hop profile is missing. It’s a little more bitter than I would like but it’s not too bad.

Updates

14-02-2016 21:00 Fermentation has started

15-02-2016 09:00 The temperature was at 27 degrees which is hotter than I wanted it and it’s bubbling rapidly. Added some ice to the bath to try and bring the temperature down